In a paper that will be published in The Financial Review, Professor Jay Ritter presents interesting data on "growth capital-backed IPOs" undertaken in the United States from 1980 to 2012. The paper excludes life science and biotech companies and generally excludes tech companies and instead looks at "growth capital companies," which are defined to, among other things, focus on growth from the addition of tangible assets or through acquisitions. In addition, the paper looks at companies that had a financial sponsor. Based on the criteria and data used, the paper that growth capital-backed IPOs have substantially higher adjusted returns. This also is true of "rollup" IPOs wherein a financial sponsor has been active. Interestingly, the paper also considers the performance of VC-backed. Here, although performance for IPOs in the 1990s was generally positive, the trend reversed subsequently and from 1999 to 2012, VC-backed IPOs suffered from negative returns. The paper is available here: https://site.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter/files/2015/09/Growth-Capital.pdf.
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